Ebola in Guinea: Interview with MSF logistician in Gueckedou

Interview with Pascal Piquet, MSF logistician in Gueckedou, Guinea. He is part of an MSF team responding to the Ebola outbreak.

"At the beginning, you’re doing crisis management: you’re discovering new things every day and you have to improvise. Everything gets more complicated and you have to pay attention to the little details that would seem inconsequential in any other emergency response. Nothing’s temporary, and you can’t go back on your decisions.

"For example, you can’t reduce the size of the area where you’re treating the confirmed cases – once the area is infected, that can’t be undone. You have to think about all this beforehand.

"In a normal disease response, by contrast, you can change course according to how the situation develops. So when we built the isolation unit, we laid some extra slabs of concrete in case there was an increase in the number of patients. That allowed us to be able to act quickly to make the space bigger without having to work in the protective suits.

"We set the isolation unit up on the existing cholera treatment centre, but the space is small and the ground is sloping. These are the limitations you have to consider and take into account.

"Also, we had to think about how we’d get rid of contaminated water. Ebola doesn’t spread through water, but we needed to be sure that the water wouldn’t carry any contaminated objects, for example.

"To build the facility, we had to work closely with the medical staff – how they saw the flow of patients going, etc. My job is to translate their ideal situations into something real. I am the person who brings it all down to earth, and has to make their dream a reality."

Interview with Pascal Piquet, MSF logistician in Gueckedou, Guinea. He is part of an MSF team responding to the Ebola outbreak.

"At the beginning, you’re doing crisis management: you’re discovering new things every day and you have to improvise. Everything gets more complicated and you have to pay attention to the little details that would seem inconsequential in any other emergency response. Nothing’s temporary, and you can’t go back on your decisions.

"For example, you can’t reduce the size of the area where you’re treating the confirmed cases – once the area is infected, that can’t be undone. You have to think about all this beforehand.

"In a normal disease response, by contrast, you can change course according to how the situation develops. So when we built the isolation unit, we laid some extra slabs of concrete in case there was an increase in the number of patients. That allowed us to be able to act quickly to make the space bigger without having to work in the protective suits.

"We set the isolation unit up on the existing cholera treatment centre, but the space is small and the ground is sloping. These are the limitations you have to consider and take into account.

"Also, we had to think about how we’d get rid of contaminated water. Ebola doesn’t spread through water, but we needed to be sure that the water wouldn’t carry any contaminated objects, for example.

"To build the facility, we had to work closely with the medical staff – how they saw the flow of patients going, etc. My job is to translate their ideal situations into something real. I am the person who brings it all down to earth, and has to make their dream a reality."